February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979

“The grandmother sings to the marvellous stove and the child draws another inscrutable house- Sestina”

Childhood Influences

Childhood

• Bishop was born on the 8th of February 1911, in Massachusetts.Her father died when she was eight months old of Blight’s Disease.

• Five years later, her mother was traumatised by her husbands death which led to a mental breakdown and she ended up being hospitalised.

• Bishop then went to live with her maternal grandparents. They were caring, loving, simple and kind people. They showed a lot of affection to their granddaughter.

Childhood• However, at the age of six, her paternal grandparents

arrived and took her to live with them.

• It was a very sudden departure for Bishop. She recalls it as a ‘kidnapping’ from a happy home to a cold, strict and serious environment.

• This was a violent change for Bishop, and created a sense of loss in her and remained with her as an adult.

• Her unhappiness showed as she suffered many illnesses; asthma, bronchitis and eczema.

Childhood

• After nine months the Bishops could not cope with Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s Aunt Maude rescued the ill and nervous child by taking her out of that environment and bringing her to live with her and her husband.

• Bishop later said that Aunt Maude had saved her life.

• Due to the many illnesses Bishop suffered she had very little formal schooling before she was fourteen.

ChildhoodThere are three of Bishops poems that deal with childhood:

• Sestina

• First Death in Nova Scotia

• In the Waiting Room

Bishop deals with her childhood in these poems.Bishop’s childhood was far from happy as it was filled with

uncertainty.

Influences• Bishop was greatly influenced by the poet Marianne Moore who she

met in 1934 and they had a strong friendship that lasted until Moore’s death in 1972

• Bishop's poem "At the Fishhouses" has a lot of similarities to Moore's poem "A Grave."

• She was introduced to Robert Lowell in 1947 and they became great friends until Lowell's death in 1977.

• After his death, she wrote, "our friendship, which was kept alive through years of separation only by letters, remained constant and affectionate, and I shall always be deeply grateful for it".

• They also both influenced each other's poetry.

• Lowell cited Bishop's influence on his poem "Skunk Hour" which he said, "was modelled on Miss Bishop's 'The Armadillo.'"

• "North Haven," one of the last poems that Bishop published during her lifetime, was written in memory of Lowell in 1978.

Awards and Honours1945: Houghton Mifflin Poetry Prize Fellowship 1947: Guggenheim Fellowship 1949: Appointed Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress 1950: American Academy of Arts and Letters Award 1951: Lucy Martin Donnelly Fellowship1953: Shelley Memorial Award 1954: Elected to lifetime membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters1956: Pulitzer Prize for Poetry 1960: Chapelbrook Foundation Award 1964: Academy of American Poets Fellowship 1968: Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1968: Ingram-Merrill Foundation Grant 1969: National Book Award 1969: The Order of the Rio Branco1974: Harriet Monroe Poetry Award 1976: Books Abroad/ Neustadt International Prize 1976: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters 1977: National Book Critics Circle Award 1978: Guggenheim Fellowship

Later Career• In 1976, she became the first woman to receive the Neustadt International

Prize for Literature, and remains the only American to be awarded that prize.

• Bishop lectured in higher education for a number of years starting in the 1970s when her inheritance began to run out. She taught at the University of Washington, before teaching at Harvard University for seven years.

• She often spent her summers in her summer house in the island community of North Haven, Maine.

• She taught at New York University, before finishing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• She commented "I don’t think I believe in writing courses at all… It’s true, children sometimes write wonderful things, paint wonderful pictures, but I think they should be discouraged."

• In 1971 Bishop began a relationship with Alice Methfessel, her literary executor.

• Bishop noted that she would begin many projects and leave them unfinished.

• She published her last book in 1976, Geography III. Three years later, she died of a cerebral aneurysm in her apartment at Lewis Wharf, Boston.

• She is buried in Hope Cemetery in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Personality in poetry

The Fish:

•She reveals that she is sensitive and noble. •She realises that the fish she caught had been caught before many times.

•She respects the fish enough to let it go.‘‘Five big hooks/in his mouth’’

Filling Station:

•She reveals that she has a positive outlook on life and notices the good in all things.

•At first all she notices how ‘’dirty’’ the filling station was.

•Soon after spotting the ‘‘doily’’ and the ‘’begonia’’, she realises that somebody takes care of the ‘’dirty’’ filling station and ‘’somebody loves’’ it.

First death in Nova ScotiaTheme:The theme is death.• Her baby cousin Arthur had died and she was at his wake to say her

last goodbyes.• ‘’Come and say good-bye to your little cousin Arthur’’

Images: Bishop uses lovely imagery in this poem.• ‘’He was all white, like a doll that hadn’t been painted yet’’. • This is a great description of what the young child would have looked

like.

Techniques: Bishop repeats some words a few times in this poem: Cold, White,

Frozen, Painted, Forever.• This makes us think of death which relates to the theme.• There is a lot of broad vowel sounds in this poem.• ‘’Jack Frost had dropped the brush and left him white, forever.’’• This gives us a deep, sad feeling.

The FishThere is a Great Eye For DetailBishop notices:• The position of the hook in his mouth• The pattern and layout of his skin "hung in strips“• That he is infested with sea-lice • His gills moving while he is breathing in oxygen • The movement and size of his eyes and the colours in them • Where previous fish hooks once hung in his mouth • How oil had once spilled over the engine in the boat

which created a rainbow like effect in the light

The FishFeatures in the poem:• Vivid and sensual imagery • Bishop gives a very detailed description of the fish • She manages to base the poem on a tiny event in her life • She sets the fish free as the joy of just knowing she caught a fish is

enough for her "And I let the fish go“• She gives human qualities to something that isn't human

(Personification)• Deeper themes underlie the surface description "Like medals

with their ribbons frayed and wavering“• Mentions different colours such as brown, darker brown,

lime, white, green, red, black, pink, yellow, orange, which gives life to her descriptions

• It's a poem with a message; The message could be that nobody needs physical evidence of victory, all that matters is that you know you won.

SestinaForm:

• In a sestina there are six unrhymed stanzas of six lines and a seventh stanza of three lines.

• The same six words are used at the end of the lines in each stanza

Theme: Childhood, Family, Memories, Regret, Sadness, Reflection of the past

Repetition of the words: Tears, Child, Stove, House, Almanac, Grandmother

Tone: • No grief or sorrow is directly expressed, but there is an underlying

atmosphere that is painfully emotional.

• Bishop’s relationship with her grandmother is positive and she acts as a mother figure for Bishop.

Summary – Stanza 1• At the start of the poem the grandmother is telling jokes and

laughing ‘’to hide her tears’’.• This is the first time were hear the word tears.

Summary – Stanza 2• The rain is beating on the roof.

• As children do, Bishop focuses on the familiar objects are her;– The kettle– The stove

• She has no idea why her grandmother is crying, but thinks that the almanac had foretold her tears, as it had the weather.

Summary – Stanza 3• From her perspective, objects have a personality and a life, just

like the kettle.• Bishop uses personification:

‘’clever almanac’’

Summary – Stanza 4• The grandmother is suffering of grief of what has happened to

her daughter and her granddaughter.• She hides her sorrow by drinking tea and pretending she

feels chilly. She is not chilly, she is only sad and emotional.• The cup is described as being full of not tea, but ‘’dark brown

tears’’. Tears in the teacup represent sorrow and grief.

Summary – Stanza 5

• ‘‘The child draws a rigid house’’. This shows that the child is awareness that she lost her father.

• The ‘‘rigid house’’ with its ‘‘winding pathway’’ represents tension and difficulties that the family have experienced.

Bishop uses personification:– ‘’It was to be, says the Marvel Stove’’– ‘’I know what I know, says the almanac’’

Summary – Stanza 6• The mood is lifted in stanza six, with the ‘’little moons’’ of

the almanac falling ‘’down like tears’’ into the flower bed that the child has drawn.

• The flower bed suggests hope, beauty and happiness for the future.

Summary – Final Stanza

• Bishop makes the almanac speak again:‘’Time to plant tears’’

• This suggests that for the adult Bishop it is time to bury her tears and move on.

• The final two lines shows that the grandmother seems to have overcome the worst of her grief, and the child continues to draw her pictures.

“Somebody loves us all”- The Filling Station

“And I let the fish go”- The Fish

The End!